


Call

by Cereal_Forks



Series: Death and the Entire Universe [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Nightwing (Comics), Red Robin (Comics)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of past suicidal thoughts, emotional breakdown
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-03
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 07:31:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18339035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cereal_Forks/pseuds/Cereal_Forks
Summary: Losing everything and having all his hard work undone to be trapped in a dimension where no one else realizes anything is wrong with that isn't as easy as Tim has been trying to make it seem. It's all made worse when the call he would have made doesn't seem to be an option anymore.





	Call

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't think of a meme for this one, so if anyone has any ideas, I'm open to suggestions. I'm not super happy with this one at all, actually, but it felt like the right ending to this little trilogy. I've had a lot of Dick being sad about stuff, but Tim's been taking everything pretty hard too, so I needed a chapter to show that off. I know at least one person is interested in seeing something with Tim and Bruce in this universe, and I think I want to write something for Kon and the Superfam too, but those would be a long time coming, so for now, this is it. Important knowledge for this one: That one issue of Robin where Tim is depressed because literally 90% of the people he knows are dead and he calls Dick. That's what this whole thing is about, so it's gonna get pretty sad.

Dick’s Nightwing costume hadn’t even been dropped on the floor yet, it still hung halfway around his hips when the phone started ringing. He wondered who the hell could be calling him at four in the morning as he crossed his apartment all the way into his bedroom to get to the cellphone plugged in by his desk. Most people he knew who would be awake at the ungodly hour would know he was on his way home and should have asked him whatever they needed thirty minutes ago. Before he was all ready for his four hours of sleep.

Dick checked the phone.

Tim.

Tim who lived in San Francisco. Tim who wouldn’t be linked into the com chat. Tim who never called. Tim who had tried calling three times already in the last hour. He’d been calling for even longer than that, Dick really needs to connect his cell to his suit in case this happened again.

Dick picked up the phone. “Tim, hey, sorry I missed your call, I just got in.”

There was silence on the other end, but Dick could hear Tim faintly breathing too quickly.

“Tim? What’s wrong?”

Tim hung up.

A weight lodged itself in his throat. A million different things could have encouraged Tim to suddenly hang up like that, and Dick had to convince himself that none of his worst-case scenarios were happening. Arkham was fully stocked these days, and Tim essentially has three metahuman bodyguards for roommates. He pulled the phone away from his face to check if something had happened to his connection and call Tim back if he needed to when his phone started ringing again.

Tim again.

“Tim?” Dick’s voice was a little too high, and too fast for a man who had convinced himself that his brother was okay.

“I’m sorry, I got scared,” Tim spat out into the phone all in the same syllable.

“What? Tim you need to calm down.”

Tim’s breathing stopped completely for a moment.

“Tim? Tim, are you okay?”

“This was a mistake, I’ll talk to you later,” Tim decided.

“No! Tim, don’t you dare, you called for a reason, talk to me,” Dick ordered.

“No, I don’t want to talk to you,” Tim said.

“Who do you want to talk to? Are any of your friends there? Tim, are you okay? Are you hurt?” Dick asked.

“You shouldn’t need to ask that,” Tim snapped.

“You sound pretty not-okay, I don’t know what’s wrong,” Dick said.

“You’re wrong,” Tim said.

“Talk to me, what’s wrong with me? What did I do?” Dick asked. The urge to sprint out of his apartment and steal a bat-jet to San Francisco was killing him.

“Nothing, it’s fine,” Tim said.

“It pretty obviously isn’t, talk,” Dick requested in his bossiest Nightwing voice.

Tim hesitated. “I was suicidal for a little bit did you know that?” he confessed all at once. “Well, not really a little bit, I was sort of suicidal for a long time. Not in a jumping off a building or in front of a train way, but in a way where every night if I didn’t come home from patrol that day I would’ve been okay with it, you know?”

Dick didn’t know.

“I’m better now, I’m not in that place anymore, but some days things still get bad, and when things got bad, I used to call you, and we would just talk, sometimes for hours. But you don’t remember any of that, do you?” Tim asked.

It took Dick a moment to realize Tim was actually waiting for an answer. “No, I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.”

“Right, another death and the entire universe thing,” Dick finished.

“It just hit me hard tonight, and I wanted to call you, but you aren’t really you, and all those conversations, the hours on the phone talking through all the hard stuff, every single time you were ever there for me, it’s all just gone, and there’s no way I can get that time or that relationship back. I realized just how much of my life and my personality are completely inconsequential, how little I really matter, fuck, Dick, I don’t matter, does that ever hit you? Tim Drake could just be wiped out of reality and nothing would change, Batman would still be Batman, you would still be Nightwing, people would still get saved and everyone would go on living their lives without me and nothing would be different.”

“That isn’t true,” Dick interrupted.

“No, Dick, you don’t understand, it wouldn’t matter. For all the universe cares, my mother could have taken me when I was a baby and crushed my head against the nearest wall and nothing about today would have changed, everything would be exactly the same, it wouldn’t matter,” Tim said.

“Stop,” Dick ordered. His stomach churned. That image was a little too graphic to simply be something that popped into Tim’s head for the first time halfway through a vent. He’d probably been sitting all by himself for an hour thinking things like that and Dick wasn’t there. “Tim, I don’t want to hear this, you’re plenty important, you’re the kid who saved Batman, remember?”

“Steph could have done that, I’ve seen it. Universes where Stephanie Brown becomes the third Robin and Tim Drake is some random kid with a camera, and things are still just swell, things might even be better.”

“I don’t care what it was like in some other universe, this is my universe, you’re my Tim, and I don’t want to hear you say that my life would be fine without you in it.”

“Isn’t it? You hardly noticed, you didn’t care when Oz took me, you went on living your life and you were perfectly happy, what difference would it make if it happened again? What difference would it have made if I never came back in the first place, I was just left to rot there forever, tell me where it matters?” Tim demanded.

“It matters right now,” Dick said, “if you had disappeared then, I never would have known how little I know about you, I wouldn’t have gotten to know you now, Tim, I’m really trying to be your older brother, and I want to be the brother you deserve, the brother you had, it wouldn’t be fair to either of us if we just lost that chance right now.”

“I’m not talking about fair, I’m talking about important, you’re already a great brother to Damian, and if you want to be a better brother to someone, Jason was here first, there’s no reason for it to be me,” Tim said.

“Well, what about your friends? Conner would still be who-knows-where in the multiverse if it wasn’t for you,” Dick reminded.

“Maybe Conner isn’t supposed to be here either, the rest of the world was getting on perfectly fine without him, maybe I was supposed to disappear to be with him, but I was selfish, and we’re both here but everything’s wrong, it’s all wrong and I’m not supposed to be here,” Tim said.

“Tim, you need to calm down, you’re my brother, and I wouldn’t replace you for anything.”

“It isn’t about what you want, Dick, fuck, I don’t want this either, but one of these days it’s going to happen.”

“What? You lost me again, Tim, are you safe?”

“I’m fine.”

“Where are you?”

Tim breathed into the phone for a moment, Dick recognized the pacing of it, one of the first breathing exercises Bruce ever taught him such a long time ago. For several long minutes, Tim just breathed, and Dick breathed back. The voice that finally answered his question was soft, but steady. “The theatre, in crime alley, I was rebuilding it into my new perch but that’s all gone now too.”

So, definitely not safe. God, how had he managed to get to Gotham without a single one of her dozen vigilantes managing to notice him? Dick knew exactly how. Tim was good at the sneaky stuff, it was his favourite part, way more fun than the tech stuff.

“Alright, I’m on my way, don’t go anywhere,” Dick said.

“No!” Tim cried. “Dick, please don’t hang up.”

“Tim, I wouldn’t be a very good vigilante if I didn’t know better than to drive while I’m on the phone,” Dick said.

“Then don’t drive anywhere, please, just don’t hang up,” Tim begged.

Fuck. Driving while on the phone couldn’t be so different from driving with the coms active, right?

“Alright, I won’t hang up, but I need you to keep talking to me, okay?” Dick said. He was pulling the Nightwing costume back on. It was less likely he would get stopped when he went well over the speed limit to Gotham city.

“I can’t,” Tim said.

“Tim, you called me to talk, so talk to doctor Nightwing, okay? Pretend it’s like before,” Dick suggested.

And he was breathing slowly again, Dick connected the call to his helmet as he boarded his bike by the time Tim was talking again.

“I’m so scared, Dick, all the time,” Tim confessed as Dick straddled his bike and Nightwing took off into the streets of Blüdhaven a second time that night. “Half the time feel like at any given second I could wake up and they’ll all be gone again, and I’ll be alone again, and I’ll be in that place again, where I don’t care if I live or die and I don’t want to be in that place because I do care, fuck, I care so much more than I want to. And then the other half of the time, I’m scared that it’s the rest of the world that’s going to wake up, and I’m just going to be gone, like my parents, like Conner and Bart were. It’ll be like Tim Drake was just a dream, and an hour later, I’ll be completely gone like the rest of them were. I’m just going to disappear and no one’s even going to remember me or be sad about it. The entire universe has been so focused on taking Kon, and Bart, and my parents away, and then I’m not even close with you or the rest of the family anymore, there’s no one left to remember if I disappeared.”

“I’m here,” Dick reminded.

“It isn’t the same,” Tim said.

“It is,” Dick assured, “maybe I still don’t know you as well as I’m supposed to, but I’m trying, and I promise, I still care just as much as before, you’re still my brother, and I’m not going to lose you.” Fuck. Almost missed his exit.

“I’m sorry,” Tim said, “fuck, I’m listening to myself and I sound like such a brat with all this existential nonsense, I’m sorry.”

“Tim, if it’s got you upset, it matters, keep talking.”

“What else is there to say?”

“Did something happen? To make you worry about this today?”

“It’s always like this.”

“But why now? Why did you need to call today?”

“Fuck, there is no reason, I’m just being a bitch.”

“Hey, no, none of that,” Dick instructed, “you’ve lived through some bad stuff, three lifetimes of bad stuff, actually, all crowded in that big brain of yours, and you didn’t deserve any of it, you’re allowed to have a bad day or two. Just try to talk me through it, I want to understand, okay?”

“Just feeling low, and everything built up from there,” Tim said.

Dick squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before returning focus to the road. “I don’t have memories of how this used to work, so can you walk me through it? What’s a low day like for you?” That felt like the wrong question to ask, but they were the only words that would squeeze past the weight still settled in his throat.

“It just happens.” Dick could practically hear him shrug. “Sometimes nothing really triggers it, other times it’s the payoff of a lot of bad days put together, I just woke up feeling off and the guys started grating on me—” the guys, not his friends, yikes, “—they’re just all so extraverted, they all want to do things all the time and I just couldn’t today. I love them, obviously, but I couldn’t deal with them. Cassie got the message eventually and took Kon and Bart out of my hair, I tried to sleep through it, but I still felt like shit when I woke up, and I thought I would talk to you, because you were always there, you’re a good listener, and it just hit me how everything’s different because you didn’t pick up. And you’ve never not picked up before, and it really hit me that everything’s really different now, I can’t keep pretending one day I’m going to put everything back the way it was, because it's never going to happen.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault, you couldn’t have known, I never call.” Again, he could hear the shrug in the pause.

“You needed me, I wasn’t there, that’s on me.”

Tim didn’t answer. He didn’t offer Dick any excuses or comforts. It sort of sucked, and it was sort of nice to have his brother admit that Dick wasn’t as great a brother as he wished he could be.

“Tell me what happened next?” Dick asked.

“I don’t know, I panicked.” He would be running a hand through his hair. Dick should have switched lanes two stoplights ago. “I wanted to see you, I knew it wouldn’t be the same, but you’ve always helped, ever since that first night at the circus, you’ve been there, and I wanted to talk to you. So, I snuck out the window and caught the next flight to Gotham because a flight to Blüdhaven wouldn’t leave for another hour. Then I was in Gotham and you still weren’t picking up, you weren’t there. Where were you?”

“On patrol, Tim, I’m so sorry.”

“You weren’t there, I kept calling but you weren’t picking up. I thought I would just stay at one of my places in Gotham for the night and I ended up walking to the theatre and it isn’t all rebuilt, and everything just hit me. It didn’t matter all the effort I put into rebuilding this place, none of the effort I put into anything really mattered, anything I’ve ever done could be erased and everyone would just adapt around it. I just matter so little, everything’s all come undone, what’s the point of me being here at all if I’m not doing anything?” His voice was quaking and rising in pitch and Dick could hear hard snotty breaths being taken in through the nose.

“Tim, you don’t need to be doing anything, you’re my brother, that’s all you need to be right now, no one is asking anything more from you,” Dick said.

“But I want to be something, you and B and all the others, you’re all these larger than life heroes, and my entire life, my friends, my family, the respect and identity I fought tooth and nail for has all been wiped off the face of the universe and I’m the only one who sees it. I want to matter to someone who isn’t me.”

“You matter to me, I know, I wasn’t there, but I’m here now, you matter to me, and to Conner, and Cassie, and Bart, they wouldn’t be here right now if it wasn’t for you, and you matter to Clark, and Diana, and Barry and Wally, they all got their kids back because of you, and I know, he sucks at showing it, but you matter to Bruce too, and to Cass and Steph, they would both beat you up right now if they heard this, you matter to Barbara, you’re her second favourite Robin, you know that? We aren’t always there, and you can’t always feel it, but Tim, I promise, you are so loved, and I need you to know that, okay?” Dick said.

“Okay.” He didn’t sound like he meant it.

“Do you want me to call Conner to pick you up?” Dick asked. That would mean he was driving distracted to Gotham for nothing, but that didn’t matter. Dick just wanted Tim safe, with someone they both trusted. Sure, Dick might not be a fan of Tim’s Superboy, but he would never accuse the kid of hurting his brother. Never again at least. And if he was going to keep Tim from sitting in the dangerous streets of Gotham all by himself in the middle of an emotional breakdown, Dick could put aside his personal opinions on the guy.

“No,” Tim said.

“Are you sure? He isn’t going to freak out that you ran away?”

“Conner’s known me long enough to know when I need space. He’s a lot smarter than people give him credit for.”

“Alright then.”

“Just keep talking to me?” Tim pleaded. “Tell me anything, the weirdest thing you can think of right now.”

“Okay, um, what do you think I would look like as a cab driver?” Dick asked. Stupid. But the first thing that came to mind. And it made Tim laugh.

“A cab driver?”

“I’m serious! What if I started all over, abandoned the Nightwing persona, quit my job and started over as a cab driver?”

“I think you’d sooner shave your head than you would willingly drop everything to be a cab driver.”

“That would never happen.”

Dick kept talking like that as he drove. He told Tim about the Titans, about what Damian had done that week, he told him about going to yoga, and about his most recent conversation with Babs. For the most part Tim just breathed along and occasionally hummed in all the right places. Which meant Dick could actually focus a little more on the road, just mindlessly running his mouth and spitting out white noise until Gotham skyline came into view, and then he drove straight to the theatre.

Tim looked small but stood out in a bright red hoodie pulled up to hide his face. His hoodie was too bright and he was too clean to really fit in with the setting, but he looked just as miserable as the rest of the city. Pale white hands with cracked red knuckles held his cellphone by his ear, humming and nodding still. He sat directly on the grimy Gotham ground, with his legs pulled up tightly to his chest.

“I’m going to hang up now, I see you,” Dick said.

“You what?” Tim asked, but immediately after saying that, he looked up to see Nightwing tossing his helmet to the side and running towards him and the theatre. He put down his phone and shouted, “what are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t just leave you sitting out here upset like this,” Dick said. He dropped to his knees in front of the still-obviously-distraught teenager.

“It’s fine, I would have called Conner to take me home by dawn,” Tim insisted.

“You didn’t call Conner, you called me, and I’m going to be here for you,” Dick decided.

Tim stared at him for a solid minute before falling forward. He wrapped his arms tight around Dick, so Dick had to squeeze him even tighter.

“Timmy, it’s okay,” Dick soothed as fat tears slid right off the sleek Nightwing leather, his own tears stained into Tim’s sweated.

“It really isn’t,” Tim sobbed. “Fuck, I hate this stupid timeline, I’ve tried to tough it out because it’s not like I have any better options, but fuck I hate it.”

“That’s okay,” Dick said.

“I want to go home.”

“I know.”

The two of them sat there for a while, Tim sobbing too hard to form words and Dick trying to keep his own breathing steady.

“Shit, you shouldn’t be out here, what would people think if they saw Nightwing helping Tim Drake with a meltdown?” Tim asked.

“Nightwing helps lots of people,” Dick said.

“This is different, and you know it,” Tim said.

“Well, maybe Nightwing doesn’t care, he’s going to support his brother no matter what anyone else has to say about it,” Dick said.

“You shouldn’t say that here, someone might hear you.”

“It’s four-thirty in the morning, we’re fine.”

“Early risers are a thing.”

“Ew, don’t remind me.” Dick laughed a little before scooping Tim up and, carrying him still curled up very small in his arms and taking him back to the motorcycle, picking up the discarded helmet on his way and securing it on Tim’s head. “Where are we going? One of my safehouses, one of your safehouses, the manor, the Haven, I could take you back to San Francisco?”

“One of your safehouses? Whatever’s closest,” Tim suggested.

“Alright,” Dick agreed. The arms Tim wrapped around his waist were exhausted and halfway-limp, so Dick went slowly driving to his nearest safehouse, and even through the helmet, Dick could hear him breathing on his back.

“Sorry I’m being such a baby,” Tim muttered when he took the helmet off and handed it back. Tear stains were still clearly burnt into his cheeks, but he seemed to have exhausted his tears for the time being. Now he was just hollow. All the tears that had been filling him up were gone now, and his voice echoed dully with his new hollow feeling.

“Tim, shut up, you aren’t a baby, you’re sad, and that’s okay,” Dick said. “We’re going to get some hot chocolate and marshmallows in you, and then you’re going to sleep, and you’re going to feel better.”

“It isn’t going to fix anything,” Tim said.

“I know, but it’s going to help, I promise,” Dick said.

Dick led Tim upstairs and he followed through on his promise. Tim borrowed a too-big pair of flannel pyjama bottoms and a clean t-shirt and Dick didn’t say a word when he counted ribs. A conversation for another night. There was hot chocolate and Tim ate twenty marshmallows before Dick cut him off. All of Dick’s safehouses were personally equipped with blurays of every single animated Disney movies on the planet. They watched The Little Mermaid and Dick sang along to every single song, which made Tim smile. Tim chose the next movie and they watched The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Tim fell asleep on Dick’s lap somewhere between Heaven’s Light and Hellfire, Dick didn’t notice until drool started staining his own pyjama bottoms. Sure, it was kind of gross, Dick would be sure to tease him all about it when he wasn’t in danger of bursting into tears and recounting his past passively suicidal exploits. Dick simply wove his fingers through his brother’s hair and tried to keep his own eyes open through the credits.

A weight was missing when consciousness returned. Tim wasn’t sleeping on his lap anymore, safe and comfortable and safe. Dick jumped off the couch.

“Tim?”

“Yeah?”

Dick spun around and Tim was standing in the kitchen with the coffee maker.

“I thought you left,” Dick admitted.

“Don’t worry, I’m fine,” Tim insisted. He brought two cups of coffee over and handed Dick the significantly darker brown mug before sitting next to him on the couch. “Sorry about drooling all over you last night, that’s sort of gross.”

“Not as gross as your coffee, how much cream did you put in there?” Dick asked.

“You should really be asking me about the sugar.” Tim shrugged and took a sip of the almost milky drink in his hands. “I like sweets, you know that.”

“Coffee isn’t supposed to be sweet,” Dick said.

“I’m seventeen, give me a break,” Tim said.

“You’ve been seventeen for three years, you don’t get to play the teenager card anymore.”

Tim laughed and they almost pretended everything was normal.

Then Dick opened his stupid mouth again. “Can we talk about last night.”

Tim placed his lips on the coffee mug for a long moment, not taking a sip, just providing a physical excuse not to answer. “I’m sorry, I lost control a little, I’m usually better about keeping it under wraps, it won’t happen again.”

“No! Tim, I want you to call, I want you to talk to someone when you feel stuff like that, I just want to know how long you’ve been feeling like that? Why didn’t you call me sooner?” Dick asked.

“We weren’t close,” Tim said. “I didn’t feel like this version of you would want to hear all my existential bullshit about death and disappearing and whatever other garbage I said last night.”

“Tim, I’m your brother, if it matters to you, it matters to me,” Dick said.

Tim nodded slowly and without eye contact.

“Talk to me, whatever you want, whenever you want, I’m always going to be here, if there’s one trait I’ve held onto between these timelines of yours, it’s that I’m still a great listener,” Dick declared.

“Thank you, it means a lot, you trying as hard as you do, I know a lot of it’s guilt, but you help, a lot,” Tim confessed.

“Guilt only had a little to do with it at the very beginning, I’m your brother because I’m your brother, that’s all there is to it.”

Tim smiled around his coffee. “You’re saying all the right things today.”

“It took me a while to get here, but I really think I’m getting the hang of this brother thing,” Dick said.

“You’ve always been my brother.”

“Yeah, well it’s about time I started acting like it.”

Tim smiled a little bit. “Alright, that’s enough sappy stuff, you can go to work or whatever you do, but I’m putting on Mulan, and if you stay, you will become an accessory to that.”

“Cass and Steph will flip if they find out you watched that without them, you know that, right?” Dick said.

“I’m not going to tell them, you’re not going to tell them, what’s the harm?” Tim asked.

“Cass will know.”

“And she will know that it was after a rough day, and she’ll forgive me.”

“If you say so, you’re a lot closer to her than I am.”

“I do,” Tim agreed. He set up the movie and Dick didn’t leave the couch. Cass and Steph would get over it.

The movie had hardly started before Dick almost missed Tim’s whisper. “Thanks, for staying with me.”

Dick took a sip from his coffee and with his spare hand he roughly tousled Tim’s hair. “Anytime Timmy.”

Tim grinned softly at the movie, and Dick smiled too. Finally, he was getting it right.

**Author's Note:**

> You can all have your Tim drinks coffee headcanons, but I say he only drinks the stuff after he's abused it with sugar to the point it can barely be called coffee anymore. Also, I may or may not have rewatched Hunchback of Notre Dame just before writing this one, and it was the first time I really appreciated how good Heaven's Light is, god, I love the entire soundtrack of that movie, Hellfire is the best Disney villain song, everyone else can go home. So, upcoming from me: Probably something from this universe with Tim and Bruce, maybe something from this universe with Kon, and I'm still working on that mammoth Fantasy AU but I keep changing my mind about things, so I keep needing to rewrite the same first four chapters. I hope you enjoyed, everyone enjoy comic book day.


End file.
